


Iphianassa

by assuwatar



Category: The Iliad - Homer
Genre: Character Death, Drabble Sequence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-29 02:21:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16254704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/assuwatar/pseuds/assuwatar
Summary: A retelling of Iphigenia's sacrifice, originally written for the City Dionysia 2017.





	Iphianassa

The winds are blowing wrong. I can feel it on the hilltop, a finger licked and raised to the sky burned blue. There are sails billowing somewhere, ships skimming the waves and coming, coming, and they are not ours.

My brother told me about the enemy from the sea. Father took him to the shoreline to watch, to count the glimmers on the horizon and guess whether they were allies or death. The men fretted, my brother said, lines creasing their faces where they shouldn’t have been. They whispered. They glanced at the bay, the galleys like beached whales, the bent grass, the empty sails. And always their eyes were drawn back to the water.

_They are coming._

_Closing in._

And the winds are blowing wrong.

*

 _Do not anger the Lady of the Wild_ is all the oracle said, when Father split entrails open and begged for answers. _Anger her and the price will be blood._ The hunt is desperate now. Before it is too late, we scramble for forgiveness, though we barely understand why. From the hilltop where I stand, I can hear our men scour the forest, dogs barking, searching for the perfect victim to offer our Lady. The perfect deer, young and slender-limbed, to turn the winds and send the ships away.

I crane my neck and listen to the air raw with shouts – screams. They are getting closer, like the ships. I can almost feel them. Hair stands up on my arms, and the flounces of my skirt shiver against my knees. It is not of the hunters I am afraid.

I know the Lady of the Wild. Her eyes do not see retribution as we do.

Her trail is full of bones.

*

A voice. A man, arrow nocked, hound growling at his feet. A name.

‘Iphianassa,’ he calls me.

I tense. The sun rolls across the muscles in my back. I am strong, though I don’t look it. There is speed in these ankles, determination hammering behind these still small breasts.

‘She will not forget this,’ I say.

He only draws his string and calls me again, a little too soothingly.

‘Come down, Iphianassa.’

I straighten my back, like the ladies I have seen on the palace frescoes. The Kretans painted them proud, coloured with bark and spice and seashells, untameable like the women of their own island. Like Her. Like those who serve Her. Like me.

The arrow flies, and a streak of red opens on ochre skin. I don’t wait for the sting of pain.

I run.

*

We will be great, Father said, when the hulls of our ships hit the waves again, we will come together with Pylos and Tiryns and Lakedaimon and we will scatter the enemy beyond the sea, sail to each and every one of their coasts and take what is theirs, take Awarna, take Apasa, take Troia –

We will be great, Father said, and like great men often do, he misread Her will.

*

The earth hits the soles of my feet; teeth snap at my heels. I run, brambles catching in my hair, twigs pulling at my skirt, and my breath grows ragged but still I dart down the hill and through the forest, Her power spurring me on. Here, they tell, She bathed and turned his own dogs against one who set eyes on Her handmaidens. And here, in the shadows of these trees, wept one who claimed better fortune than Her mother, and saw her children fall one by one to Her arrows. Here, in this grove, by this pond, and here, and here, and here... Here She fostered and gave shelter, here She was wronged, and here Her anger crushed mortals like brittle wood.

Here I run, leaping over rocks and tumbled trees, as men whose names I know give chase.

The pillars of Her sanctuary open up on either side of me then vanish into a blur of green and brown. Twenty, thirty more steps and my hand will be on her altar in supplication. I speed up one last time, the wind lashing my face from where it should not. The temple, too, is wrong. Rows of bronze glint along the walls, and when the door closes behind me, there is no echo. I turn to run back where I came from. Bronze silhouettes block my path.

Then Father is in front of me.

‘Iphianassa,’ he says, and his fist holds a knife.

*

 _Io, io_ comes the cry, and it is over before I can feel it.

 _Io, io_ and the fine-ankled girl, with eyes like a deer’s, is traded for the blowing winds.

_Io, io popoi!_

The Lady’s arms enfold me.

For this there will be death.

*

At first all is calm, and the hot air settles on the ships and the shore and the hilltops. I watch at Her side under a blackened sky. Somewhere below, Father washes his hands and lies down to sleep, and Mother draws my brother and sisters close, knowing, perhaps, what is to come.

Tomorrow the men will sail out. Tomorrow they will think the war is won. Tomorrow they will pay the price for killing one who belonged to the Lady.

Perhaps for this they will lose the battle; perhaps they will not, and sail on and sack the homes of the enemy beyond the sea; it does not matter. More enemies will come, and slowly, surely, Father and his own will falter. Mykenai, Pylos, Tiryns, Lakedaimon, one after the other, all those who side with him will follow.

She warned of blood, and blood there will be now.

Tomorrow the winds will blow right, and like trees grown too big, they will fall.

**Author's Note:**

> Iphianassa is the Homeric form of Iphigenia.


End file.
